A Study On Market Channel Strategy Of K Company In Feminine Hygiene Products In China

Feminine hygiene products have been entering Chinese local market since 1980 s.Along with economic development and the change of consumption concept, the domestic market has accomplished rapid growth. In 2015, the total consuming volume of feminine hygiene products in China has already exceeded 60 billion RMB.K(hereinafter referred to as K Company) in America had invented the world's first piece of feminine hygiene product and in present it is the world's largest tissue manufacturer as well as the second largest company in the U.S. to provide family &personal care articles. This company has entered Chinese market through acquiring domestic brand “Souermei” in 1994.“Souermei” has been positioned in the low-end market in China local market,however, K employed simple localized marketing strategy after acquisition, making its own high-end brand “Kotex” unable to apply the same channel. Therefore, the channel conflicts became more serious, resulting in the decrease of its market share dropping from the original 38% to less than 1%. After a period of channel reconstruction, K's high-end brand “Kotex” has gradually regained part of market share in middle and high-end market. Nevertheless, challenged by the increasingly fierce competitions of some international brands including “Whisper” and “SOFY”etc., together with the drastic growth of domestic brands, “Kotex” is still difficult to increase its market share.In this thesis, I will use K as an example to explore how do multinational corporations,especially feminine hygiene brands, encounter fierce channel competitions and iron out channel conflicts to improve the efficiency of brand communication and expand market share. In order to make a statistical analysis, I will use marketing management theories that I have learned, especially theories about channel management and brand equity; then I will collect and process the industry background and the second-hand literature inside the company as well as obtain the first-hand data of female consumers' attitudes toward feminine hygiene products through questionnaire. This thesis aims to make proposals on ameliorating channel conflicts through starting from the marketing channels problems in front of K after analyzing K's localization strategy, especially targeting Chinese female consumers' characteristics of demand and comparing with its main competitors' channel strategy,.